franzbrandstaetter.com

Mar 14, 2019

2 min read

All down - what I learned from Facebooks biggest outage

Last night it happened: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all went down for a serious amount of time.

Within a couple of hours one could observe how our modern western society might collapse pretty damn soon, if not a big change will happen. Thousands of people where out of their routine, some out of their jobs and others just suffered from a cold turkey due to not being able to post on social media. People started to make fun first but pretty soon that changed and most of them got frustrated and angry on the not working services.

For me it was interesting to see how I would react and how my life was already linked to social media as well. First I did not realise that the problem was not on my side. So I logged out of Instagram and as soon as I did that, I couldn’t get back in. I checked for the error message online and found out that the three main services from Facebook were all having serious problems.

I did try to log in like every 30 minutes, so I guess I am already pretty addicted. The thing that struck me most though was my feelings. I mean, let’s face it: one company rules billions of people and their behaviour. If Facebook decided to shut down their services I am pretty sure thousands of people would go nuts. How could that happen ? Why did our society allow one company taking over the control entirely ? Why don’t we celebrate and go outside and enjoy the freedom of the media and the pressure to post or to get followers ?

It’s frightening isn’t it! And that was how I felt like. Afraid of being robbed and unable to get back in control. It was then that I realised that I never have control over my content or my data that I share. I give all that control away and it is up to someone else what I am allowed to do.

Is this what our society is going to be remembered for? A group of people who shut their eyes to the big problems and freely giving away the control of all we own, our personal knowledge, personal behaviour and personal data. How should we fix our planet for our kids if we don’t take back full control? Do we rely on others to fix these problems for us? I guess my learning here is that our world is dominated by companies that have one goal. Control.

Let us fight to get back what belongs to us! For a better life and a better world !